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Customers who had their paid-for copies of 1984 and Animal Farm yanked from their Kindles over a copyright issue are taking Amazon to court, InformationWeek reports. The company has apologized for its action and vowed not to repeat it, but the plaintiffs, who include a high school student whose homework was deleted with the book, say the mere fact that Amazon can delete content at will diminishes the value of their Kindles.

"Amazon.com had no more right to hack into people's Kindles than its customers have the right to hack into Amazon's bank account to recover a mistaken overpayment," a lawyer representing the customers said. "Technology companies increasingly feel that because they have the ability to access people's personal property, they have the right to do so. That is 100% contrary to the laws of this country."

I was considering purchasing a kindle... but now, no damn way. Can you imagine a book store manager coming into your house and removing a book you recently purchased without notifying you? Screw Amazon and screw kindle. I hope both of those companies go out of business.

Snarfeh

Aug 1, 2009 4:41 AM CDT

I don't think the people are as outraged about the 99 cents as they are that Amazon accessed their Kindles without prior notification and that, based on the article, items were deleted other than what was targeted. And I reiterate...get a netbook, download a free reader and you're done. I even have a converter that converts various reader formats. So far, I've not encountered any limitations.